1. Field of the Invention
The field of the invention is data processing, or, more specifically, methods, apparatus, and products for selecting a redundant power supply mode for powering a computer system.
2. Description of Related Art
The development of the EDVAC computer system of 1948 is often cited as the beginning of the computer era. Since that time, computer systems have evolved into extremely complicated devices. Today's computers are much more sophisticated than early systems such as the EDVAC. Computer systems typically include a combination of hardware and software components, application programs, operating systems, processors, buses, memory, input/output devices, and so on. As advances in semiconductor processing and computer architecture push the performance of the computer higher and higher, more sophisticated computer software has evolved to take advantage of the higher performance of the hardware, resulting in computer systems today that are much more powerful than just a few years ago.
Many computer systems today require high availability. To provide such high availability power supplies powering a computer system are often configured in various redundant power supply schemes where a fault of one or more of the power supplies does not interrupt operations of the computer system. Some power supply schemes provide a greater power output than others at the cost of redundancy. In addition, the power output of a power supply may vary with the AC inputs voltage level of the power supply—a higher AC input may allow a higher output power level from the power supply. To provide greater maximum output power to a computer system as well as redundancy, therefore, it would be useful to configure power supplies operating with a lower AC input in a redundant power supply scheme providing greater maximum output power and configure power supplies operating at a higher AC input in a redundant power supply scheme providing greater redundancy with lesser maximum output power.